Change
by nyakattia
Summary: Danny, walking through the snow and thinking. DL. 3rd in my Climb This Mountain series after Silent Night and Afterwards. We're still not there yet folks.


_questions i can't seem to find/ to the answers i already have/… feel like i don't belong and i/ can't tell right from the wrong and why/ have i been here so long_

-Yellowcard, _City of Devils_

Even in the dead of night the city was alive. As the noise and light reached for the heavens, soft white snowflakes began their gentle drift downwards. It would be nothing but a nuisance for some the next morning- traffic would be delayed, cars would have to be dug out of snow drifts, children would claim tummy aches and refuse to go to school.

But for those who were watching, the snow blanketing the city would mean something more. Everything looks anew covered with snow. Everything looks peaceful. Perhaps, just perhaps, something new and peaceful could begin in them too.

When they are asked by the people around them (lovers, coworkers, people yelling from their useless cars in the middle of a traffic jam), "Just why are you so damn happy today?", they wouldn't know how to answer. Eventually they would reply, "It's a beautiful day."

Danny Messer never used to be one of these people. Sure, he was as attuned to the moods of his city as much as any New Yorker, but last year, and the years before, he was the man grousing to his friends about the damn weather. When he had awoken this morning however, he hadn't seen the problems the snow bought with it, but the promise.

As dawn began to break over the city skyline, he got off the subway and walked through the Park, hunched over against the cold. As his feet crunched through the snow, the promise began to work his magic on him.

Lately things had been unsettled. It seemed that he was always vaguely dissatisfied, as if no matter what he did, something was missing. Finally talking to Lindsay had helped, at least once they had stoped arguing, but there was something more that was missing.

Danny had a feeling that his past was catching up to him. There were things he'd done, things he could have prevented from happening but didn't, things he just plain didn't do. It wasn't all from when he was just a kid, and all of it weighed on his conscience.

The gnawing fear kept him up at night. When he did sleep it was unsettled, his dreams full of vague fears. Only in the daytime, when he was around others did the feelings decrease. They never went away completely.

Sometimes he couldn't meet his own eyes in the mirror.

Danny knew it was time to step up to the plate. To become someone who earned Mac's faith and lived up to it. To become someone who deserved someone as beautiful and broken as Lindsay Monroe. Someone who had the patience to deal with his Montana at work- and the understanding to see her through her fears in private.

He could try. Try to be a better cop, a better scientist, a better friend, a better son. He would have tried to be a better brother if he still had a brother to be better too. Maybe on his next day off he should go back home to Staten Island, visit the place they buried his brother and apologise for all the times he failed him. And tell him thanks. For saving him.

Then maybe he could visit his mother. Ask her what put the shadows back in her eyes. He knew it wasn't all about Louie. And he could check up with Hawkes- see how he was doing after the whole Shane Casey case. Hell he could even make sure Flack wasn't still feeling the after affects of the bomb blast last summer that nearly killed him, Mac and Lindsay.

And as for Lindsay…

They'd been skirting around the issue for weeks but Danny knew that someday soon they were going to start talking about what happened before she left Montana, and his own past. If there was anyone he could seek absolution from, anyone whose opinion really mattered, it would be her.

He looked up from his feet as he approached the lab. She was waiting for him outside.

"Coffee?" she asked with a smile when he was close enough to hear her.

"Thanks Montana," he drawled, taking the cup she offered him.

For a moment he was tempted to kiss her. It was snowing lightly and the soft light of new day was still bathing the city in its glow. They were all alone.

But he had some things he needed to work out before he would allow himself to do so.

Instead they turned towards the lab and walked in together.

Not yet… but someday soon.

* * *

I wrote this story about snow in 33 degree heat (that's Celsius). The beginning of the last episode, with snow falling over New York, was just too beautiful to ignore. Next story coming up in the series is Befriended. 


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